My connect with William Nordhaus is not with the fact that he is a Nobel laureate in economics but that he became the co-author/editor of that famous textbook in economics written by Paul Samuelson, another Nobel laureate in economics (1970), in fact the second in the world and the first American to win the Nobel in economics. My classmate at Johns Hopkins Arnab Basu, who had done his masters at Delhi School of Economics and had classmates at all the elite universities in US, including at MIT where Paul Samuelson taught almost all his life after having graduated from Harvard, told me one time that the other professors in economics used to discount the letters of recommendation that Samuelson used to give to students because he would give excellent recommendations to almost everyone.
Interestingly, Samuelson’s brother-in-law was another Nobel laureate in economics Kenneth Arrow who taught at Stanford, and another famous (or infamous? given his rather insensitive remarks a couple of times) economist Larry Summers was Samuelson’s nephew (brother’s son). So, Prof. Steve Blough, who taught us advanced macroconomics at Hopkins, joked once, “I wonder what gets discussed at Samuelson’s family gathering during the Thanksgiving.”
I remember borrowing Samuelson’s textbook during med school from my classmate Sachin Sankar, which belonged to his father the late TL Sankar, an IAS officer who went on to be awarded the Padma Vibhushan. Sachin was a close friend during med school, with whom I used to discuss everything under the sun, from Emerson to the Upanishads. Sachin would say he preferred to read the bare text of the Upanishads, whereas those days I used to prefer to read the Upanishads that also had a commentary on the verses. Sachin now is a consultant child psychiatrist in the NHS London.
My attention to Samuelson’s textbook was drawn by Pramod Reddy, my good friend and also a relative, who himself was brilliant in economics but later on went on to do his masters from Harvard Law School and later did not go on to complete his PhD in economics from London School of Economics where he was enrolled, and as I recall he was trying to do his research on patents. Pramod now practices law in Hyderabad, on whom I wrote this poem: “Question the Answer, Question the Question – To My Dear Friend Pramod Reddy” — https://selfrealization.blog/2025/08/29/question-the-answer-question-the-question-to-my-dear-friend-pramod-reddy/
Talking of Kenneth Arrow, there is an incident in his life that was mentioned by Prof. Steve Slutsky (not to be confused with the other economist after whom is named the Slutsky equation) who taught us microeconomics at University of Florida, Gainesville. I believe when Lionel McKenzie (who taught at University of Rochester) got up to present his proof of the Gneeral Equilibrium Theory, Kenneth Arrow got up and told him and the audience that he had already presnted such a proof the day before at the same conference, and so only Arrow and Gerard Debreu went on to win the Nobel for this work but McKenzie did not get that award. But, when I queried Claude about this incident, it gave a different account from the one that Prof. Slutsky told us:
I found no firsthand account of the incident, and what I did find doesn’t match the version you gave me.
According to a review of Weintraub and Düppe’s book Finding Equilibrium, the Arrow-Debreu paper and McKenzie’s paper were presented on consecutive days at the December 1952 Econometric Society meetings. Barkley Rosser’s blog post adds that McKenzie’s paper was presented a day before theirs, with Debreu attending McKenzie’s talk while Arrow did not, and Debreu did not tell Arrow about it.
So the documented order is the reverse of the story as you told it. McKenzie spoke first, and Arrow wasn’t in the room. The sources I found don’t mention anyone standing up to interrupt a talk. The “a day apart” detail is probably the real kernel, and the dramatic scene may have been added in retelling, or it may come from a source I couldn’t find. Neither source says where the meeting was held, so I can’t confirm or rule out London.
The wider record is consistent with this. McKenzie’s paper appeared in the issue of Econometrica before the Arrow-Debreu paper, and Rosser reports that Debreu, as the referee at Econometrica, delayed McKenzie’s paper and kept knowledge of it from Arrow. This is Rosser’s account of Weintraub and Düppe’s findings, and I haven’t checked it against the book itself.
This article (https://econospeak.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-continuing-effort-to-properly.html) gives a slightly detailed account of this:
One of the bigger long-running scandals in the economics scientific credit game has been the downgrading of the role of the late Lionel W. McKenzie in proving the existence of a competitive general equilibrium, generally credited to Arrow and Debreu. Roy Weintraub, who has championed McKenzie’s cause for over 30 years, has a new book out with Till Duppe from Princeton University Press, Finding Equilibrium: Arrow, Debreu, McKenzie and the Problem of Scientific Credit, which reveals fresh details about the matter.
The big new news from this book is about the role of Debreu in delaying the publication of McKenzie’s paper and also suppressing knowledge of it, particularly to his coauthor, Kenneth Arrow (who, arguably, should have found out about the paper on his own). McKenzie’s paper was finished first and even though Debreu as referee for it at Econometrica delayed it, it actually came out one issue ahead of the slightly more general paper by Arrow and Debreu. McKenzie cited their paper, but theirs did not cite his, which had been presented a day before theirs at a 1952 Econometric Society conference, with Debreu attending McKenzie’s talk, which Arrow did not do, and Debreu not tellling Arrow about it.
Weintraub also reports that McKenzie long ago accepted that he was going to get less credit and be forgotten largely, taking a philosophical attitude and noting all the famous and deserving people who never got the Nobel Prize in their fields.
